Minnie Palmer

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Minnie Palmer about 1885
Album with songs from My Sweetheart

Minnie Palmer (born March 31, 1860 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † May 21, 1936 in Bay Shore , Long Island , New York ) was an American actress .

Life

Minnie Palmer was a daughter of actress Kate Palmer and a stepdaughter of Joseph Stearns. Her birth father died when she was seven years old. At the age of eight she began training in music and dance in Vienna and Paris . She had her first appearance as a twelve year old in Baltimore . In 1883 she made her first appearance in England. Minnie Palmer was very popular in the USA at times. Later, Minnie Marx , the mother of the Marx Brothers , took on the stage name Minnie Palmer, which caused some confusion in the press.

One of Minnie Palmer's successes was My Sweetheart . Minnie Palmer was accompanied by her Minnie Palmer Company .

Minnie Palmer was married to theater agent John R. Rogers from 1884. During a marital dispute, he allegedly tried to kill his wife with a knife in 1890. In 1893 a divorce was discussed, in 1895 it was carried out.

The Cleveland Diamond Affair

Through John R. Rogers, Minnie Palmer was also involved in the affair about a gem called Cleveland Gem or Cleveland Diamond . This stone was discovered in South Africa in 1873 and came to New York in 1884 , where it was bought by John R. Rogers and Simon Dessau and their brothers. The stone was then cut by John Weiner (or Wiener) and even after processing was still more than 42 carats. This made it one of the largest diamonds ever cut in New York. The presidential election in the USA fell during the time of the cut. The stone was then named after the winner, Grover Cleveland . The stone was shown at the centenary exhibition in New Orleans in 1884/85 and then given a setting that resembled a rose blossom. This flower could be unfolded, so that the diamond hidden in the middle emerged.

In 1885 Minnie Palmer returned from an engagement in London on the Oregon . The press reported that the actress would wear the diamond as a piece of jewelry for her next performances. It was during this time that John R. Rogers began to develop clear signs of bipolar personality disorder . For example, he wrote letters that had all the characteristics of stalking . The hatred he harbored for Minnie Palmer's mother also took on increasingly strange blossoms, up to and including the attempted murder in 1890, which had to do with Minnie Palmer's contact with her mother. In 1891, Minnie Palmer fled to England to be safe from her husband.

The Cleveland Diamond stayed in the US - either it was never officially passed into Minnie Palmer's possession or, as a wedding present, it was returned to Rogers after the couple separated. In any case, it was kept in a bank in New York.

In 1882 the Actor's Fund was founded to support needy stage members. This foundation planned an event in 1891 to collect as much money as possible. It was supposed to take place in Madison Square Garden . Numerous monetary and material donations were received for an auction or raffle. John R. Rogers offered to give the foundation a raffle for the Cleveland Diamond at the event.

The exhibition was furnished with stalls in the style of historic theaters under Stanford White's direction. For the diamond exhibition, the centerpiece of which was to be the Cleveland Diamond, a booth in the Moorish style was set up. For the diamond raffle, 20,000 tickets worth one dollar each were printed, which was the estimated value of the stone. The event began on the evening of May 2, 1892 and was a great success. About $ 180,000 was received instead of the planned $ 100,000. However, of the 20,000 tickets printed for the drawing of the famous stone, only about 9,000 were sold. The drawing took place on May 14, 1892. The prize fell on ticket number 9810, which had not been sold. This meant that the stone had to be returned to its owner.

However, Rogers had agreed with the Actor's Fund that if the stone was not drawn, it would be auctioned and the profit shared. For this purpose, the diamond was given to Messrs. Sanger, Aldrich and Knowles from the Actor's Fund. Meanwhile, Rogers traveled to England to reconcile with Minnie Palmer, which he seemed to succeed - but in July 1893, to the astonishment of the press, he announced the divorce. The process, which dragged on for over a year, was viewed by many reporters as further evidence of Rogers' insanity. In November 1895 the divorce was declared and a little later Minnie Palmer announced that she was engaged to the Prince d'Estella of Navarre.

For nine years it remained silent about the diamond that the pompous Minnie Palmer once owned or at least wore. In 1901, Rogers suddenly sued the Actor's Fund to repay him the $ 6,500 that the foundation allegedly owed him. During this time he spent a few days under observation in Bellevue Hospital. During the trial, the lawyer AH Hummel stated that the foundation had long settled accounts with Rogers and no longer owed him. Amazingly, no one could name the auctioneer who supposedly sold the stone. The process ended with no tangible result and the valuable stone has disappeared since the time of the unsuccessful raffle. The fact that Hummel advised Minnie Palmer on her divorce and other matters, and later served a prison sentence for a misdemeanor, casts a somewhat strange light on these proceedings. In 1907, Rogers traveled again to Europe on the St. Louis ship to reconcile with Minnie Palmer. However, this attempt was not granted lasting success. Rogers, for whom a charity event had already been organized in 1904 because of his financial difficulties, was run over by a car in 1932; Minnie Palmer outlived him by a few years. Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the Cleveland diamond.

Web links

Commons : Minnie Palmer  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. IMDb . Retrieved May 30, 2011
  2. Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.picturehistory.com
  3. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?GRid=6092598&page=gr
  4. http://www.musicaustralia.org/apps/MA?function=searchResults&term1=Palmer,%20Minnie.&scope=scope¶meter1=phrase&location1=Anywhere
  5. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9402EFD6113BE533A2575BC1A9679D94619ED7CF
  6. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A00E7D9103BEF33A2575BC2A9619C94629ED7CF
  7. http://www.mindat.org/article.php/465/The+Mystery+of+the+Cleveland+Diamond
  8. http://www.langantiques.com/university/index.php/Cleveland_diamond